Advice for New Manual QA Testers | Working with devs + things I've learned as a software tester

go ahead and ask those questions i was intimidated by the developers and i have heard horror stories [Music] hello welcome to this video today i'm going to tell you a few tips for brand new qa hi if you're new here my name is madeline i have been a quality assurance analyst for a software company for a year and a year and three months now i am manual qa and since i started posting my work type content on youtube i got a lot of questions about software testing which i was not expecting i didn't think anybody would want to hear about my job but i was wrong so i wanted to make just a quick video for people who are new to qa just a few tips some advice i would give things that i have learned since i started first a few disclaimers um i do manual qa not automation qa we do some automated tests sometimes at my work but the bulk of my work is writing up my own test cases and then going through them and documenting that they're successful and then when they're not i work with the developers to find where the problem is they fix it and then i test the fix i will not have any tips for automation because i'm not qualified to give such advice and i'm not going to be going into super technical details because i think this job is so specific and even within my own company i don't think i could give technical tips to someone in a different module because there's just so much specificity within software but i did come up with a few things that i think in general will help any software testers lastly i've been doing this for a year and three months but only at one company in one team so this is just based on my experience your experience as a software tester could be totally different hopefully these tips still hold true but just know this is just based on my own experience okay tip number one is ask all the questions but be as specific as possible so don't be afraid to ask questions to other qa on your team to your team leads to the developers to the product manager ask questions in our meetings where we figure out our new development asking questions is so important i think at first i was scared too because i thought i just didn't understand it i assumed everyone else already knew all these answers but once i started asking my questions i realized that a lot of the times other people had the same questions or it was something that we hadn't thought about yet questions like how is this component going to interact with this component what do we expect to happen if the user does this does this match with the rest of this page go ahead and ask those questions i think framing things as a question is also easier when you're in meetings where people have different opinions instead of saying this doesn't match this page phrase it as a question does this match this page just bring it up you know food for thought and then also when you're testing if you come across something strange or you think something's not working go ahead and ask but this is where the specifics are going to come into play now that i'm in a position where sometimes people are asking me questions i found it's really helpful if they are as specific as possible from the beginning so if i come across a page and i click a button and the button doesn't work instead of immediately messaging the other qa and just saying hey this button isn't working or is this button not working for you instead i'm going to be as specific as possible so i'm going to tell them the environment i'm testing on the user i'm logged in as i'm gonna have screenshots or a video how i navigated to that page as many specifics as possible so that there's just fewer back and forth and we waste less time a lot of times these bugs are very specific and it doesn't just happen all the time sometimes they do sometimes something's just completely broken but a lot of the times it's the specific way you went about it and the other person needs to be able to recreate those steps in order to find what's really wrong don't be afraid to ask your questions but take a second to get kind of your story together know how you created that error and if you can recreate it and then send all that information and i think the person you're asking will really appreciate that my second tip for new qa is to build relationships with your developers i think when i first started this job i was intimidated by the developers because they literally are working in a different language i don't know any coding languages i get this question a lot i don't know any coding languages i'm sure it would be super helpful if i did and i'm starting to pick up on little bits and pieces here and there but i am still amazed by the developers and i just think they're basically magic but i was definitely intimidated so i would only ask other qa different questions and i had to get over that because the developers have so much knowledge and they're the ones literally building this thing this web page this application whatever it is you're testing so they are great resources to ask questions like if i don't know the expected outcome of something yeah they're just a great resource it's also very important to build a relationship with the developers that you work with because as a quality insurance analyst my job is to find things wrong with their work in my personal life i would not do this i don't want to nitpick other people so it can be kind of strange when your whole work is to tell someone like hey this is broken that's why it's so important to build a relationship with your developers where they feel valued and they know that you appreciate their work and that you're just coming from a place as a team where you're trying to put the best product together you don't want to be in opposition you really want to be a team that's working on it together i think that makes a much more enjoyable work experience it can be exciting sometimes to find a bug especially when you first start out because you're like hey i'm doing it i found something wrong but you obviously don't want that to come across as you rubbing it in the developer's face or anything and sometimes there can be confusion or just things that i don't understand about the development process so things might take longer than i would think they should or the fix could be installed and it could still be broken but i think it's just important to always approach it with assuming the best about your developers because they're just trying to do the best job they can too this next tip i think this is a pretty general one like i said i've only worked at this company so i really don't know how other software companies do their testing but this tip is always double check the environment you were working on so as qa at least in my experience we have a few different environments where we test the code before we release it to live before clients use the code but we also have access to live because sometimes you need to troubleshoot on there and you need to test things on there it could just be so bad if you're just going about your business testing something making all these changes and it turns out you are on live and you are making real life changes that could be catastrophic always double check your environment um for me that means checking like the url that i'm on i've been there for a year and three months and i still every single day periodically just double check the environment that i'm on the most important part of your job as qa is keeping that live environment safe for the user so any testing accidentally done on the live environment could have very negative consequences and i have heard horror stories of people who are very new at the job just going through their day testing away doing like regression checklists making lots of changes online to a real client so double check your environment and my fourth tip is to keep testing notes for yourself there can be a lot of stuff to keep track of you're probably working on multiple issues for your project that are in different places as far as bugs reported bugs fixed expectations what testing environment they're on i started i think like six months in i started keeping notes i just make a little chart and the project number i have a column for it bugs reported a column for bugs fixed and then a column just for notes in the notes column if there is anything that i just think i'm going to forget anything that the developer said hey make sure you double check this i'll put it in that notes section or if i need to communicate with someone about something i haven't gotten to do it yet i'll put it there i also keep track of the testing environment that it's on there and if i've asked for it to be merged or not and the bugs reported obviously once i report a bug to a developer i put it in that column and then once it's fixed i move it over to the bug's fixed column and i like strike through it but i keep it there until the issue is completely released that way if something comes up i can remember that like oh we've already dealt with this or i'll know to double check for that this has been super useful for me i used to have to go back through our team's messages to see if i had reported something or not and if the developer had responded or not and it just felt very chaotic so now i have this one place where i just dump everything i need to know and then keep it there until i don't need to know it anymore and then i delete it this also helps with my work life balance because at 5 pm every day i can just log off of work and not think about it there's nothing that i'm like worried i'm gonna forget because it's all written down it's there and it'll remind me monday morning i don't worry about forgetting stuff over the weekend write down as much as you can keep a testing note document and tip number five don't expect to be perfect when you're first starting this kind of job there's a lot to learn and it can feel really overwhelming and honestly it still feels overwhelming to me sometimes it's way better to work slowly and thoroughly than to try to rush and meet all your deadlines but even being slow and thorough you're gonna miss stuff because we're human and that just happens sometimes you might not realize that code is touched somewhere else or code from another team could mix with yours and there's you're just gonna miss stuff it's gonna happen it does suck i hate not doing something very well but it happens the important thing is to use those times as a lesson i think some of my best testing practices have come from bugs that i missed so things with like user permissions or we're using outside services trying not to get super specific here again but just things that have caused a really big problem online because i missed them because i'm not perfect influence all my other testing and make me a better tester after that and help me be more thorough yeah you only have to miss something once to really not want to miss it again so don't expect yourself to be perfect just kind of take a deep breath be thorough think it through and you'll figure it out okay those are my tips um now i'm gonna take a few minutes to answer some questions that i get asked quite frequently um most of these i've already answered before but i know people don't watch every single video so so one question i get asked a lot is if i do manual or automation qa i do manual qa i do think automation is becoming more and more integral in the testing process and i believe my company is working to incorporate more automation so i'm gonna have to get more comfortable with that we do have a tool that my company developed specifically for my company and we use that tool so i'm not going to give out any specifics there that is something i'm going to be working on and learning in the near future but currently i'd say i'm like 98 manual qa and people often ask if i did a school or boot camp for qa and i did not i do have an undergraduate degree in english education and a degree was required for my job but not like a computer science degree not any like specific testing certification i don't know if this is common or not i'm sorry i only know my experience but i did have a connection in this job so i knew someone who had already worked for this company for a few years had a good reputation he was in qa and he was able to reach out to a recruiter who then reached out to me so i think connections are very important but i did not have like a specific testing certification before i got my job okay another one i get a lot which i already answered earlier in the video do you need to know how to code i personally do not other qa probably do i think with automation you're writing more scripts i don't know any coding languages i have started to get decent at um finding error logs and writing queries no i won't even say i'm decent writing queries i have a query that i know works that i just copy and paste other than like a very low level fundamental knowledge of that i don't know any code this person asks you get tasks you need to do scenarios and test cases as a team we vote on the work we want to do how much we think we can get done in a sprint and i do kind of get to decide when i'm going to work on what it's kind of up to the qa a little bit like as the developers finish things we pull them in to the testing environment but i do kind of get to structure my day according to priority but yeah a lot of the time is up to me to get things finished and then in meetings sporadically but yeah you kind of get to decide what you want to work on when within your deadlines and time frames and whatnot okay i think that's going to be it for this little video if you are qa or developer or anything i'd love to hear your experience and your thoughts just so more people can get more information i think knowledge is power so people are curious about this job this is at least my experience and if anyone else can give their experience that'd be even better if you have any other questions for me leave them down below i will try to answer them or make a follow-up video or something thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Madeline Elaine

Views: 2,761

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Id: RY0FRYeGCTQ

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021